The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group works to help people whose rights have been violated and investigates cases involving such abuse, as well as assessing the overall human rights situation in Ukraine. The Group also seeks to develop awareness of human rights issues through public events and its various publications

Head of the Western regional customs Taras Kozak wants to obtain 86000 hryvnas of compensation from the newspaper “Lvivska gazeta” for reprinting a material from the Polish weekly “Rzecz Pospolita”

Kozak believes that the facts adduced in the article are not true.

As a result, the head of the Western regional customs turned to the Lychakivskiy district court with the demand to oblige “Lvivska gazeta” to refute the inauthentic information and to recompense him the moral damage equivalent to 86 thousand hryvnas. In his claim Kozak quotes a fragment of the article by Polish journalist Petp Koscinski, which caused damage to his image:

“The tax service of the Lviv oblast is now headed by three persons. The most important figure is Sergiy Medvedchuk, a brother of Viktor Medvedchuk, the head of Presidents Administration of Ukraine. The brothers help to each other. Any requests on the case of Sergiy Medvedchuk, even the request of the Polish government about the case of “Credit-bank” (Ukraine), do not evoke any response either of the President or of the Prime-Minister of Ukraine. The second person is Mykola Khomiak, a deputy head of the oblast tax administration, the head of Lviv tax inspection. The third member of this triumvirate is Taras Kozak, who heads the custom service. Recently he fired from his service gun in one of Lviv restaurants, but nobody punished him”.

The collective of “Lvivska gazeta” doubts that Mr. Kozak will manage to obtain these money, since the Ukrainian legislation does not envisage the responsibility for reptinting any materials from other editions.

The article had been published in “Rzecz Pospolita” on 15 October 2003 and was reprinted by “Lvivska gazeta” on 16 October.